Viewership and Ratings
Introduction Viewership is critical to the success of a television show. The most critically acclaimed show will soon find itself cancelled if it can't get an audience to tune in each week and watch. Viewership patterns are measured by the A.C. Nielsen Company, a Dutch company based in New York. The so-called "Nielsen ratings" are the benchmark by which networks evaluate the success of their shows, and determine whether they should be renewed, cancelled, moved and more. They are also crucial to attracting advertisers and to setting ad rates, the price an advertiser pays for 10, 15 and 30-second advertising time slots. Every day, Nielsen samples a representative group of families who record, either electronically or in a diary, what they watch. These Nielsen families, who are chosen to represent the demographics of the overall American viewing audience, are used to estimate actual television viewership. From these viewership data, Nielsen is able to calculate viewing patterns, who is viewing and whether they continue viewing once they turn on a show. To accomplish this, Nielsen uses audience sampling, a research method that takes a small sample of people who represent a larger population, and studies what, and how, they watch television. This research methodology is also commonly seen on the news, when network polls sample small numbers of voters, and from the results of their poll, predict who might win an election and by how large a margin. Sampling of this kind includes what is known as error, that is, the difference between what the sample tells Nielsen is the number of people viewing a show, and the actual number. Most statisticians attempt to maintain error within a 5% band, meaning that for an estimate of 1.0 million viewers, the actual viewership is actually somewhere between .95 and 1.05 million viewers. It should be noted that Nielsen does not report its error bands, which often indicate they are quite large, perhaps as much as 10%. The wider the bands, the less accurate the estimate. Nielsen ratings are reported daily, the morning after every evening's broadcast (Saturday data are reported with Sunday data on Monday.) By 10:00 am, Pacific time, Nielsen has released "fast national" ratings, numbers based on their electronic data collection. By mid-afternoon, their "broadcast final" ratings data, which are more complete and more accurate, have been released. But what do those figures mean? Viewership, Rating and Share Let's imagine that Nielsen reports one episode of Person of Interest had 10.65 million viewers with a 3.0 rating and a 17 share. Is that good, or should we be worried? It's all in knowing how to read the ratings data. Nielsen uses a variety of approaches to measuring the viewing audience of a given show. The three most common methods are: * Viewership: An estimate of the actual number of people watching a show. This is the simplest measure -- how many people does Nielsen estimate are actually tuned in to Person of Interest, and do they stay tuned in? To measure this, Nielsen reports average viewership for an entire episode, as well as in half-hour increments. That allows Nielsen to determine how many viewers who tune into the first half of the episode are still watching during the second half of the episode, which is particularly important during a show's first few episodes. This methodology also allows Nielsen to examine viewership habits from hour-to-hour, and estimate audience retention. In the case of Person of Interest, CBS is interested in how much of the NCIS:LA (9:00 pm) audience POI retains at 10:00pm. If NCIS:LA had 13.27 million viewers the same night POI had 10.65 million viewers, POI retained 80.3% of its lead-in audience. One of the biggest problems with viewership figures is that the potential number of people in the audience for a program varies from night-to-night and from week-to-week. One week, 10.65 million viewers might be 15% of the number of people actually watching television; another week, it might be 24%. Day of the week and time of day are important, too: the potential TV audience is larger on a Thursday than on a Tuesday, and at 9:00 than 10:00, which also influence how we interpret, and especially compare viewership figures from week-to-week, from season to season, or between shows. That makes viewership figures alone a poor measure of how successful a show actually is. To combat this problem, Nielsen uses two additional statistics which mathematically equate viewership numbers so we can make some comparisons: rating and share. * Rating: In the United States, there are currently 115.6 million households with one or more television sets, what Nielsen calls "television households." A rating point represents 1% of the television households viewing a show, or 1.156 million viewers. Thus, a 3.0 rating would be 3 x 1.156 = 3.468 million households. Use of ratings allows Nielsen to measure not only the total audience but audience subgroups by age, gender or ethnicity. The most prized group, and the rating we generally see reported, is the 18-49 age group, the group Nielsen and most advertisers believe are the most active spenders (a supposition that is increasingly being called into question.) Consequently, our 3.0 rating above would indicate 3.47 million households with at least one 18-49 year old, or 3% of the potential households with an 18-49 year old, tuned in to POI. * Share: The audience share is the percentage of televisions in use (that it, turned on) that tuned into a television show. A 17 share would indicate that 17% of televisions in use are watching Person of Interest. Rating Time Periods Nielsen reports rating and share for multiple time periods. Originally, rating and share reflected live viewership only. With the advent of the VCR, and now the DVR and other electronic media, Nielsen has begun to collect data on time shifted viewership, and reports data for three time blocks: Live + Same Day audience (viewers who watch live or within 24 hours), Live + 3 Day and Live + 7 Day (time shifted or "DVR" viewership over the following three, then seven days.) Nielsen began to collect time-shifted data in 2005, but advertisers were reluctant to use these data until around 2010, so it's only recently we've begun to see these data routinely reported. Nielsen also collects viewership data for both first-run broadcasts and reruns. For shows that run twice in an evening, such as seen with many cable summer shows, ratings data for each broadcast are gathered and reported separately. Broadcast Sweeps Three times a broadcast season, in November, February and May, viewership and ratings become particularly important. The ratings during these periods of time known as "sweeps", are the basis for price networks will charge for advertising time: the higher the ratings, the more a network can charge for 15 and 30 second advertising time slots and the more prestigious advertisers they will attract. Reruns, which result in far lower viewer numbers, are rare during these periods. Sweeps are all about new, high profile programming. These high-stakes blocks of time are when shows roll out episodes designed to draw the largest possible number of viewers. Advertising campaigns that accompany these episodes are also produced to pull viewers. Although Live + same day, Live + 3 day and Live + 7 day viewership numbers are all important, live numbers are particularly important, and the networks will do what they can to get you in front of your TV when a sweeps episode is broadcast rather than watching it on your DVR a couple days later. Sweeps episodes will feature resolution of long-running story lines, multi-episode arcs, major events such as weddings, the return of a departed cast member, or "stunt" casting of high-visibility actors, all to induce viewers to watch live. Most series' season finale will fall late in the May sweeps period. The recent "Endgame" arc, which concluded Carter's search for the leaders of HR, is a classic example of how a sweeps period story arc will work. In the episodes prior to , the events leading to the arc itself played out, concluding with Terney's identification of Alonzo Quinn as the head of HR in , broadcast the first week of sweeps. With the groundwork in place, CBS rolled out an intense, and intensive, advertising campaign centering on the arc, giving it a title, leading us to believe Fusco would die, and (hopefully) grabbing our attention. Over the next three weeks, we watched breathlessly as the story played out, then spent hours afterward talking about it on our forum -- exactly what Bad Robot and CBS wanted. And hopefully, we also bought the products that were advertised during those expensive ad breaks. For CBS, that's their endgame. The final episode of the sweeps period generally concludes with an open ending that leaves us asking, "what happens next?" and keeps us coming back for more. Remember and , that stunned us, then kept us on the edge of our seats as the new Samaritan story line began. We hung in over the holiday break waiting to find out whether John would return, what Decima was up to, and what Control would do to Finch and his college friend. That's what sweeps are all about: they keep us watching and keep us watching those ads. Are the ads really that important? Ask yourself: how long after the Super Bowl were you talking about the new ads, even if you didn't watch the game? 'Sweeps Periods for the 2014-2015 Broadcast Season' Sweeps run over four weeks, beginning on a Thursday and ending on a Wednesday. * October 2014: October 30 – November 26, 2014 * February 2015: January 29 – February 25, 2015 * May 2015: April 23 – May 20, 2015 Note: A fourth sweeps period, during July, sets ad rates for daytime programming, new network programming and cable programming. Scheduling and Time Slot International Viewers Season 1 Season 1 Viewership'''http://www.seriesmonitor.com/personofinterest/season1.html Season 1 was broadcast on Thursday at 9:00 E/P time (one hour earlier in the Central and Mountain time zones). 9:00 pm is typically the broadcast hour with the largest potential audience, and Thursday, along with Sunday, traditionally have the largest audience by day. The series remained in this time slot through its second season. {| width="100%" style="border: 3px solid #999; padding: 1px; color:#000;" ''Person of Interest'' -- Season 1 ([[Viewers#Season 1 Graphs|graphs]): Live + Same Day / Live + 7 Day (L+SD/L+7) in millions] '''S = sweeps 101 13.33/16.09 109 12.66/15.89 117 15.67/18.88 102 12.51/15.08 110 12.93/15.84 118 14.59/17.78 103 11.57/14.21 111 14.86/17.98 119 13.69/16.49 104 12.04/14.52 112 14.10/17.75 120 12.73/15.86 105 12.42/15.06 113 15.10/18.31 S''' 121 13.27/16.37 '''S 106 11.62/14.10 S''' 114 15.14/18.43 '''S 122 12.96/15.84 S''' 107 11.76/14.59 '''S 115 13.16/16.72 S''' 123 13.47/16.27 '''S 108 11.65/14.61 S''' 116 14.56/17.75 '''S {| width="80%" Season 2 Season 2 Viewership'''http://www.seriesmonitor.com/personofinterest/season2.html {| width="100%" style="border: 3px solid #999; padding: 1px; color:#000;" ''Person of Interest'' -- Season 2 ([[Viewers#Season 2 Graphs|graphs]): Live + Same Day / Live + 7 Day (L+SD/L+7) in millions] 201 14.28/17.836 209 14.18/17.609 217 14.57/18.335 202 14.58/17.620 210 14.08/17.446 218 14.34/17.552 203 13.93/17.424 211 16.23/19.767 219 14.57/18.057 204 14.03/17.402 212 15.67/19.042 220 13.22/16.446 205 13.66/16.815 213 15.71/19.337 221 12.96/16.325 206 14.87/18.115 214 14.88/18.380 222 13.16/16.492 207 14.57/17.978 215 14.87/18.342 208 14.43/19.951 216 14.22/17.847 << Season 1 | Season 3 >> {| width="80%" Season 3 'Season 3 Viewership'http://www.seriesmonitor.com/personofinterest/season3.html In Season 3, CBS moved the show to Tuesday at 10:00 pm E/P, a time slot where it has traditionally had difficulty placing a successful show to follow its major hits NCIS and NCIS:LA. Tuesday often has a smaller potential audience, and typically, viewership drops between 9:00 and 10:00 pm, when the audience turns to local news or begins to head to bed. However, Live + 7 day (so-called DVR) viewership tends to increase significantly. {| width="100%" style="border: 3px solid #999; padding: 1px; color:#000;" ''Person of Interest'' -- Season 3 ([[Viewers#Season 3 Graphs|graphs]): live + same day / live + 7 day (L+SD/L+7) in millions] 301 12.44/16.762 309 12.28/17.050 317 10.94/15.305 302 12.35/16.435 310 11.89/17.167 318 12.23/16.648 303 11.65/16.042 311 12.40/16.684 319 11.45/15.425 304 12.69/16.981 312 12.10/16.624 320 10.74/15.124 305 13.17/17.330 313 12.54/17.358 321 11.31/15.135 306 12.00/16.240 314 12.35/17.154 322 10.50/ 307 11.79/16.116 315 11.00/15.756 323 10/95/ 308 12.60/17.092 316 10.64/15.327 << Season 2 | Season 4 >> {| width="80%" '''Note: There is a 2-3 week lag on L*7 data availability. Graphs {| width="80%" style="border: 1px solid #999; padding: 1px; color:#000;" Person of Interest Season 1 {| width="80%" style="border: 1px solid #999; padding: 1px; color:#000;" Person of Interest Season 2 {| width="80%" style="border: 1px solid #999; padding: 1px; color:#000;" Person of Interest Season 3 *There is a 2-3 week lag on L*7 data availability. {| width="80%" style="border: 1px solid #999; padding: 1px; color:#000;" Person of Interest Audience by Season Comparisons {| width="80%" style="border: 1px solid #999; padding: 1px; color:#000;" Person of Interest Ratings by Season Comparisons Other viewer data will be added at a later time. References PERSON OF INTEREST VIEWERS & RATINGS (current) http://tvbythenumbers.zap2it.com/category/weekly-tv-ratings-rankings/top-timeshifted/ (historical) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Person_of_Interest_episodes Note: Reference 1 is secondary; references 2-5 are tertiary, but deemed reliable.